The Government should learn from Germany’s relentless efforts to enable companies to take on new workers.

First on the list, and simplest to achieve, is matching Germany in exempting companies with fewer than ten employees from dismissal regulation. Also in the short term, shared parental leave should be implemented with direct flat payment to parents and maximum working flexibility.

Work should begin on the creation of a new flexi-job contract, tax-exempt and regulation free, to enable younger, older and returning employees to get work.

If Truss does want to copy Germany, she should probably bear in mind that they have far, far more employment protections than the UK:

At a time when people are more depressed about the economic future than for a long time it is unlikely taking away their rights at work is going to make them happier. Young people, in particular, will be hardest hit – they are, after all, much more likely to have been employed for less than two years.

Vulnerable workers, especially those without a union to support them, will be most likely to be intimidated into not taking a case to tribunal, even when it’s a good one.

And all this for really dubious economic benefits. When the Labour government brought that threshold down to one year there was no noticeable impact on employment, and there’s precious little sign of employers demanding this.

I agree with Liz Truss that we should look to Germany to learn the lessons of a successful economy. In short, we should develop excellence in apprenticeships, introduce some form of state investment bank, harness government support to become a world leader in green technology and introduce a Social Market Economy, where trade unions are welcomed as partners in developing economic success.
Tim Page, Senior Policy Officer, TUC, and author of ‘German Lessons: developing industrial policy for the UK’

Germany works better because it crowd-sources – in business, in local, regioal and national government. This comes about because it is more democratic witth workers representation on works councils and PR in all elections. Contrast our lot, not even inviting major stakeholders to a meeting on the NHS at number 10.

I wanted to take on an employee, a young person, and train them, but Labour’s employment legislation deterred me.

If an employee is not performing adequately, it’s very difficult to fire them. They can go to an industrial tribunal, with a vexatious claim, with no merit, and keep me tied up in legalities for months, sometime years. There have been cases of small businesses being bankrupted by these cases, or fearing the costs so much that they end up having to settle out of court, just to save the business.

So I decided not to employee anyone. And I’m not alone in that decision. This is a classic case of well-meaning Socialist intervention backfiring and ending up with completely the opposite outcome to what was intended. Socialism destroys jobs; it’s the enemy of small business and wealth creation.

Let’s take another example, in leisure. I belong to a chess club. A young person wanted to join. But in order for him to come along and play a few games of chess, we would be required to appoint a ‘nominated child welfare officer’ under undergo CRB checks. The result? No-one wanted to do this. So we can’t have any junior members.

That’s the effect of Socialism in the real world. It’s tries to micro manage lives and organizations with more and more laws because it’s convinced that it has a superior moral agenda, but the implementation is flawed and the motives misguided.

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So you’ll only employ someone if they have no rights. Great, I hear America’s a lovely place to live.